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Sunday, 15 March 2015

Postman's Park (3): Mary Rogers

The twin-screw steamship Stella
was operated by the London & South Western Railway Company between
Southampton, Jersey and Guernsey as an extension of its railway service
to the coast. Its rival the Great Western Railway ran a service from
Weymouth; the two competed on the speed of their crossings, often racing
each other from the Casquets reef to St Helier. Although the companies
did not officially acknowledge the competition, passengers were well
aware of it and the newspapers reported it.

On 30 March 1899, both companies were running their first daytime service of the year. Travelling to the Channel Islands, the Stella hit
thick fog. It was nearing the Casquets reef, notorious for its danger
and the number of ships which had been lost there. Although the Casquets
did have a lighthouse, the light was not visible due to the weather
conditions, while the Stella didn't hear the fog signal until
too late. The captain believed that the reef was still several miles
ahead, a mistake which had tragic consequences: still at full speed, the
Stella ran aground on the Casquets and sank in eight minutes.

Press
reports stated that the conduct of those on board was exemplary, with
no men leaving the ship until all women and children were in lifeboats -
this appears to have been exaggerated as one lifeboat contained a
number of men but only one woman, while some women and children seem to
have been left on board. Those who made it to the lifeboats suffered a
long night in cold seas. One capsized at launch, although survivors
clung on to it; finally righted by a huge wave, it was flooded and swept
along by the tide for nearly 24 hours before being found. Among those
who died during its night at sea were the mother and brother of Bening Mourant Arnold,
who survived only because his mother had tied the laces of his football
to his shirt collar. Tragically, according to his father's memoir,
Bening had sighted the lights of Alderney harbour but because another
passenger believed that two red lights meant danger, they rowed away and
were carried down the French coast.

Among the 105 who died was
Mary Rogers, the senior stewardess. She was born in Frome, Somerset but
married a seaman from Southampton. By the time of the disaster she was a
widow with two grown-up children and a dependent father; her husband
had been washed overboard the Honfleur six years earlier. When disaster struck the Stella,
it is said that she calmly got the women out on deck and into
lifeboats. One woman was without a lifebelt; Mary gave her her own. She
then refused to get into the boat herself, as it was already full and
she would not risk endangering it. She waved it goodbye; as the ship
went down, her reported last words were, 'Lord, have me.' Her body was
never found. (The accuracy of this account has been questioned by Jake Simpkin's
research, but whether or not the story's details are all true, her
conduct and that of the other stewardess Ada Preston certainly deserved
praise; 'the greatest admiration' was expressed by the Board of Trade
inquiry.)

Mary became a national hero. Feminist Frances Power Cobbe proposed a memorial; £570 was raised and the money was shared
between Mary's family and the construction of a memorial on the quay at
Southampton. Mary also has a stained glass window in Liverpool's
Anglican Cathedral; a memorial was placed on the harbour wall at St
Peter Port, Guernsey in 1997. William McGonagall, best known for his
poem on the Tay Bridge Disaster, was also moved to verse on this occasion although he did not mention Mary Rogers. In his inimitable style, he begins:

'Twas in the month of March and in the year of 1899,

Which will be remembered for a very long time;

The wreck of the steamer "Stella" that was wrecked on the Casquet Rocks,

By losing her bearings in a fog, and received some terrible shocks.

Rather more elegantly, Mary's plaque on the Watts Memorial reads:

MARY
ROGERS, STEWARDESS OF THE STELLA, MAR 30 1899, SELF SACRIFICED BY
GIVING UP HER LIFE BELT AND VOLUNTARILY GOING DOWN IN THE SINKING SHIP.

Following
the disaster, the two steamship companies finally agreed to co-operate.
They ran services on alternate days, pooling ticket receipts: there
would be no more racing. As for the Stella, its wreck was
rediscovered in 1973 by divers Richard Keen and Fred Shaw. They kept its
location a secret until it was rediscovered by John Ovenden. With David
Shayer, he has published a book on its discovery.

In the Guernsey Folk and Costume Museum courtyard is the captain's skiff from the Stella.
Smaller than the ship's lifeboats, it nonetheless carried 14 people to
safety during the events in which Mary Rogers lost her life.